1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a brushless DC motor and more particularly, to a brushless DC motor which does not have a position sensor for detecting a rotational position of a permanent magnet rotor.
2. Description of the prior art
Recently, brushless DC motors have been widely used in industrial or audio and video equipment requiring higher reliability for reasons that service life can be improved as well as noise generation can be reduced resulting from such an advantage that they do not need to have a mechanical contact as would be used in conventional DC motors having a brush.
In order to perform the switching operation of a conducting phase of the stator windings of a motor, most of conventional brushless DC motor a rotor position sensor (such as, for example, a Hall Effect Sensor) instead of using brushes. However, the rotor position sensor itself is not cheap and requires sophisticated positional adjustment for setting and an increased amount of wiring so that the cost of the brushless DC motors is large as compared with DC motors having brushes.
In addition, some structural limitations will be frequently imposed thereupon for the reason that a rotor position sensor has to be set inside the motor itself. A recent trend is that accompanied with the reduced size of industrial or audio and video equipment, motors to be used are made small in size and thickness, which means that the sectional space where a rotor position sensor such as the Hall Effect sensor is to be provided becomes extremely small. As a result, several types of brushless DC motor having no position sensor such as, for, example, the Hall Effect Sensor have been previously proposed.
Out of which, a brushless DC motor disclosed, for example, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 55-160980 is based on the so-called half wave driving method in which an electric current is supplied unidirectionally to stator windings of the rotor. With this method, counter electromotive forces induced in two stator windings being stationary out of three-phase stator windings are detected, and the signals thus detected are operationally processed to determine the next conducting phase so as to thereby supply an electric current unidirectionally to the stator windings in a successive manner. With this method, however, because the rotor is stationary when starting a motor, no counter electromotive force is generated in each of the stator windings. As a result, in such a brushless DC motor as described above according to the prior art, a starting circuit is specially provided for exciting a specific stator winding so as to thereby determine the initial position of the rotor in advance. In this case, however, even if only one phase of the stator windings is excited in order to determine the initial position of the rotor as shown above, the position of the rotor becomes vibrative and difficult to stabilize, resulting in an increase in starting time.
In addition, the brushless DC motor according to the prior art is based on the half wave driving method in which an electric current is supplied unindirectionally to its stator windings, so that its driving circuit can be made simple in structure on the one hand, but on the other hand, the utility and efficiency of the stator windings are low as compared with a brushless DC motor based on the full wave driving method in which an electric current is supplied bidirectionally to its stator windings, so that a torque to be developed becomes small.
Also, disclosed, for example, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 62-260586 is a brushless DC motor which is based on the so-called full wave driving method in which an electric current is supplied bidirectionally to its stator windings. An electric current flowing to its stator windings is switched forcibly and successively when starting by a starting pulse signal outputted from a starting pulse generating circuit so as to thereby drive the motor. When the rotational speed of the motor is accelerated and counter electromotive forces are induced in the stator windings, zero-crossing points of the counter electromotive forces are detected so as to thereby delay its output signal by a constant period of time by a monostable multi-vibrator, thus, the timing of conducting an electric current is determined. In this case, however, even when the stator windings are switched forcibly and successively by a pulse signal outputted from the starting circuit when starting, the rotor becomes vibrative in rotation. As a result, even if a zero-crossing point of each counter electromotive force can be properly detected by a detection circuit, the switching is difficult to be properly changed from the starting mode to drive the rotor by switching the stator windings forcibly and successively to the normal position detecting mode to do it by detecting the zero-crossing points of counter electromotive forces induced in the stator windings. That is, the timing of switching from the starting mode to the normal position detecting mode of the rotor is difficult technologically, resulting in an increase in starting time of the motor.
In addition, a brushless DC motor according to the prior art as described above uses such a method that the conducting phase is determined by delaying a pulse signal generated at the zero-crossing point of a counter electromotive force induced in each stator winding by a constant period of time through a monostable multi-vibrator. In this case, however, the delay time is constant independently of the rotational speed of the motor, which means that it is not suitable for an application where the rotational speed has to be changed, thus lacking in flexibility of application.
Generally, in these brushless DC motors not having a rotor position sensor, the rotor is stationary when starting, and no counter electromotive force is generated in each stator winding. As a result, the conducting phase at the initial stage is not allowed to be determined and such a problem has been further pointed out that they are outstandingly inferior in starting characteristic to DC motors having a rotor position sensor.
Also, these brushless DC motors not having a rotor position sensor are considered as a kind of synchronous motor in that the phase switching is forcibly operated when starting, and the frequency for phase-switching suitable for the starting operation is largely varied depending on the magnitude of a load to be applied to the motor or the inertia of the rotor. In some cases, the zero-crossing point of a counter electromotive force induced in each stator winding may not be properly detected externally, so that such a problem has been further pointed out that the switching operation from the starting mode to drive the rotor by switching the stator windings forcibly and successively to the normal position detecting mode to drive the rotor by detecting the zero-crossing point of each counter electromotive force is difficult to do properly.
In addition, in these brushless DC motors according to the prior art as described above, an electric current flowing to the stator windings for driving comprises a rectangular wave signal with a conducting width of about 120.degree. in terms of electric angle. As a result, in order to reduce a spike voltage induced accompanied with the switching operation, a filter circuit including a comparatively large capacitor is practically required to be provided at a conducting terminal of the stator windings. Also, an electric current flowing to the stator windings is subjected to an ON-OFF operation in an abrupt manner, so that a problem further arises in that vibration and noise can be easily generated when starting and such a trend is accelerated as the rotational speed of the motor is increased.